Striking security guards who are tasked with protecting the safety of Department for Work and Pensions staff at jobcentres and other sites have voted to reject a pay offer tabled by outsourcer G4S.
Members of the PCS union who are employed by the security firm on its DWP contract gave the thumbs down to the latest offer by a margin of more than 5:1 – and backed further industrial action in the dispute even more strongly, the union has said this week.
PCS members and their counterparts at the GMB union have been staging strike action at DWP sites for several months in a bid for better pay.
The GMB suspended its strikes after G4S tabled the latest offer in August. A ballot of its members who work on the DWP contract is due to run until 4 October.
PCS members did not suspend their planned strike action. Their ballot shows 86.6% of respondents rejecting the current pay offer. A further question asked members if they are prepared to take further strike action in support of better pay – and 88.7% of respondents said "yes".
G4S's latest pay offer would increase hourly rates to £11.76 for most security staff, which is a 32p uplift on the National Living Wage. The firm's previous offer was worth an additional 23p an hour. Because the increase would be backdated to December 2022, staff would be looking at backpay of at least £869, based on a 42.5-hour week.
Angela Grant, DWP group president for PCS, said rises to the National Living Wage expected to come into effect next April would immediately force G4S to hike the pay of security guards on the contract above £12 an hour.
"It’s high time G4S did the decent thing and offered this group of scandalously low-paid workers a wage they can live on," she said.
"They should cough up from the huge sums of money they make from the contributions of taxpayers. The government and the DWP need to act now and bring this work in house to stop these profiteers pocketing our money."
Grant said the union will be writing to G4S to pass on the ballot result and inform the contractor of further strike dates.
G4S declined to comment.